Arsenal punched their ticket to Wembley for the League Cup Final with a 1-0 win over Chelsea at the Emirates, 4-2 on aggregate. As you’d expect from this Arsenal side, it was a defensive masterclass. Anything
that wasn’t snuffed out by Declan Rice and Martin Zubimendi patrolling the middle third was calmly dealt with by the defense. Chelsea needed to score to send the tie to extra time (and score again to advance) and they got hardly a sniff. Kai Havertz put the icing on the cake scoring with the last kick and pointing to his Arsenal badge.
It was a somewhat odd game made even stranger by the commentary and punditry. You’d be forgiven if you thought Liam Rosenior and his Chelsea side didn’t know the scoreline in the tie. They played with a shocking lack of urgency and commitment for a trailing team. But you wouldn’t know that if you only had the commentary audio. Well into the second half, they were talking about how well Chelsea’s plan was working and how Arsenal needed to dictate the game.
Rosenior’s plan seemed to be kill as much of the game off as possible and make attacking changes late on to snatch it. I don’t really understand why you’d waste more than three-quarters of the time allotted time before trying to score a TYING goal, but I’m not a top flight manager.
I guess he was scared of conceding a goal exactly how they conceded to Kai Havertz at the final whistle — turnover, break, easy finish. He was probably also afraid of conceding a penalty on a play like the one where Trevoh Chalobah took Gabriel Martinelli down in the box, even though one wasn’t awarded. The initial tackle was fine. The Chelsea defender got a touch on the ball. But when Chalobah raised his trailing leg to trip Martinelli, preventing him from getting to the loose ball about a yard away to continue towards goal, it was a foul. Possibly a DOGSO foul. A pretty badly missed call, I’d say.
To be fair, you could chalk up a fair bit of Chelsea’s attacking impotence up to Arsenal’s magnificent defense. Part of why Chelsea’s tactics looked so wrong is that Arsenal made them look wrong. Chelsea very well might not have scored even if they’d gotten their setup and plan right. That’s how well the Arsenal defense played.
Joao Pedro is going to have nightmares about William Saliba and Gabriel, who pocketed him all night and won every physical duel. The Chelsea striker spent about as much time picking himself up off the ground after asking for a foul that wasn’t given (and wasn’t committed) as he did playing the ball. Piero Hincapie had arguably his best showing for the club. Jurrien Timber was solid, as ever, including one particularly impressive sequence where he calmly took the ball off Estevao, beat him up the line, and drew a yellow card on the Chelsea man for a pullback.
Arsenal didn’t concede an open play shot from inside the box between the 7th and 97th minute. That’ll do just fine when a 0-0 means you advance to the final.
Chelsea simply needed to break down Arsenal’s well-drilled structure. Get beyond Declan Rice marauding around the middle of the field, wrecking attacking moves. Outwit Martin Zubimendi’s clever game-reading and excellent positioning. Win a 1-v-1 duel with one of the four defenders, evade the next one who’d inevitably be sliding over to cover, and then beat the goalkeeper. Easy-peasy, right?
There’s really not much more to be said. Arsenal should probably have been out of sight after the first leg. Arsenal thoroughly outplayed Chelsea (again) in the second leg. The (much) better team won both legs and the tie. Onto Wembley to face either Manchester City or Newcastle (2-0 to City in the first leg).
